Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @04:38PM
from the climatologist-pit-fighting dept.

ArthurDent writes "For quite a while global warming has been presented in the public forum as a universally accepted scientific reality. However, in the light of Al Gore's new film An Inconvenient Truth many climate experts are stepping forward and pointing out that there is no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon, much less any particular cause of it."

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science"

Strangely enough this is from a website that is sporting anti-bush t-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers

I'm sure you've heard that we can use carbon nanotubes to build a space elevator. That's just one thin ribbon going up to space. We can build it wider, all the way around the US, so that we don't have to share our tropical climate with places like Sweden (go bork yourself) and North Korea.

We'll probably split the Atlantic down the middle and go two thirds the way across the Pacific. As a bonus, I think there will be at least a 50% drop in Mexicans climbing over the border.

This really makes no sense: a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science

What? If they are scientists, and they "know" something, then surely they must have some very solid scientific evidence for their assertion, and thus should feel comfortable publishing it in a scientific journal. I'm always skeptical of claims that hundreds or thousands of supposedly respectable scientists hold a non-mainstream view but can't express it because some shadowy cabal is forcing them to stay quiet.

If they have solid scientific evidence to refute the solid scientific evidence in support of global warming, then they should publish it. If they don't, then as scientists they should know better than to spout off without any proof of their claims.

From the grandparent: This really makes no sense: a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science

From the parent:I'm always skeptical of claims that hundreds or thousands of supposedly respectable scientists hold a non-mainstream view but can't express it because some shadowy cabal is forcing them to stay quiet.

From me: There's a lot of difference between publishing (which is what very many scientists do) in reputable journals, and stating things publicly. There shouldn't be. But even people with open access to journals can pick and choose about which evidence to support. Just because one faction is outspoken and has flashy "evidence" to support a view, and another faction has supposedly solid evidence to support a contrary view but stays relatively quiet does not mean, unfortunately, that the better evidence will win. It means that people will hear the loud, flashy stuff, and (for the people who have a sense of curiosity, but perhaps not a driving need to delve into the literature on their own) just wonder why the other side hasn't said much: Gosh, perhaps the flashy, outspoken side IS right. Why haven't I heard much from the contrary viewpoints?

From me: There's a lot of difference between publishing (which is what very many scientists do) in reputable journals, and stating things publicly.

So why not publish the dissenting findings in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal? If there are sufficient grounds to question the research that has been published thus far, I would expect that it would not be difficult to promote a dissenting work.

Heck, Phillipe Rushton [wikipedia.org] still gets published from time-to-time, and his research has been widely discredited. This suggests that the relative popularity and/or merit of your findings does not appear to have much influence on whether (or not) you get published,

So, if the case for global warming is as weak as some of these folks claim, why have they not published rebuttals or counter-claims?

Of the hundreds of comments attached to this story, yours is by far the most insightful and informative. I disagree with your polite "none very impressive", and think you're wrong about "none in global warming" and "unqualified scientist". That panel is composed of professional Greenhouse deniers. They are "impressive" and "qualified" to testify before a Canadian fake "Conservative" government that's hired by polluters to protect Canada's giant fossil fuel exports to the US (our #1 supplier). And probably dreams of a "warm Canada" their vast real estate holdings can finally cash in on as people "migrate" from uninhabitable regions to the south, while finally getting a year-round passage between East and West hemispheres across the Arctic.

Just look at their actual resumes, of course not quoted by "Canada's Fastest Growing Independent News Source", probably also funded by the Canadian Greenhouse industry and their global Murdoch partners.

Tim Patterson [carleton.ca] is a geologist, not a climate scientist - exactly the kind of scientist the BS article excludes to fake its conclusion that most Greenhouse scientists aren't qualified.Boris Winterhalter [kolumbus.fi] is also a geologist, not a climatologist.Geologists mostly work for the oil business, which is where most of the money for the entire science comes from, their peers who review, their "next gig pool".

These people are professional Greenhouse deniers. That Canadian panel and its Canadian tabloid (an obvious rightwing rag, just looking at its front page) are cheap fronts for the polluters responsible for the Greenhouse. They're not even trying to hide it more than a couple of googles and clicks deep, they hate us so much. And judging from the hundreds of posts in this story falling for it, we are that stupid.

articles. Rather, it is challenging Gore's (and the political left's in general) interpretations.

I am a scientist, though not climatologist. I feel that the data is all but certain that the atmosphere has warmed about 1C in the last one hundred years. I think virtually all of my colleagues agree with this. As for the cause of global warming, things are far murkier. Since we don't have hundreds of earths where we can run nice reproducible tests in order to study what variables matter and what do not, we can NEVER provide conclusive evidence for cause. That being said, the data is still fairly solid that we are most of the problem. The current consensus from the ICC implies something like "there is a 90% chance that human activity is the primary cause of the observed global warming". I think this is fair, given the data. Certainly, a 90% chance of a problem is enough to justify the consideration of preventative action.

Some GW skeptics claim that since the earth's temperature has been all over the place in the past, some "natural" phenomena could have caused the warming. While this is possible, they should be able to point out what this "natural phenomena" is. So far, none of the logical possibilities have panned out. For example, there is slight evidence that solar radiation may have increased, but nowhere near enough to explain the observed warming. Changes in orbit, which have largely driven the ice ages, have not occured. If it is NOT CO2 and other greenhouse gases, it must be some other cause. If it is, we should be able to measure it. What is it? The skeptics fail to point out plausible alternatives. If the alternatives are not plausible, it is logical to conclude that it is the greenhouse effect. Hence the ICC's 90% odds.

The left, however, vastly exaggerates any data supporting the existence of GW or its dangers. Any talk of "tipping points" or blaming Katrina on GW, for example, are either entirely unsupported by the data or extremely premature. At worst, without GW Katrina would have been a weak Cat 4 instead of a strong one. GW did not "create" Katrina, though it is possible that it made her slightly worse.

Another problem with the left is that they ignore economics. When the economists crunch the numbers, they often find that even assuming GW is real, adaption is simply the cheaper option as compared to prevention. To put it simply, doing anything about GW that would actually make a difference could be far more expensive than it is worth. It may be easier to build some flood walls than buy a zillion solar panels, for example. I rarely find that the left is even willing to engage in this debate, probably because they are on very weak footing there.

Aw... it was not until I was 3/4 of the way through your comment that I realized "GW" stood for "Global Warming" and not our president. I was getting pretty excited thinking that he might not exist, or at least that people were arguing how to blame Katrina on him. Hmph.

It may be easier to build some flood walls than buy a zillion solar panels, for example.

Boy, now there's a statement begging to get ripped apart by a 20 to 50 year cost of money analysis. Unless the contractor, municipality, state, or national government makes sure the flood walls cost less by building to what they want it to cost, rather than what's needed to work, even a few hundred miles of dikes can get rather pricey. The Netherlands is densely populated enough that it's cost effective to do them right. Given the geography and political culture in the US, it would be a political necessity to - in future hindsight - fuck it up.

What it boils down to is that it's the oil and coal extractors and the coal fired power companies that will really have their nuts in a vice over the expense of prevention. They would prefer to continue offloading the effect of their current business practice by spreading the cost of adjustment over the entire economy.

From the side of economics and policy. When economists and policymakers talk about the "cost" of fighting global warming, what they are actually calculating and referring to are the burdens placed on existing industries, as they exist today. They have a much harder time with two other aspects of the economy, though: very long-term costs (such as environmentally-driven health factors), and innovation that creates or radically transforms new industries. The former is just too difficult to estimate with any reliability, and the latter represents a "wall" of future change through which current knowledge and analysis cannot penetrate.

As such it is important to remain skeptical of the claims of the burdens related to fighting global warming. Regulatory and environmental constraints can harm existing industries, but they can also spur the development of new technologies and new industries, and thereby spur overall economic growth.

The real economic question is one of the pace of change. Large public companies concerned with quarterly earnings and stock price have a deep interest in managing the pace and nature of change, and they spend a lot of money in Washington and the states and the media in an attempt to do so. It is very difficult for large companies to change their business model; often impossible. They will expend huge capital to prevent or delay change that would require them to do so. Whereas disruptive, smaller companies--the great American entrepreneurs--prefer to move quickly in the market, innovating and growing as fast as they can.

Some corporations manage change very well. You can probably name some of them right off the top of your head--they're the ones who were advertising their "green" technologies on TV a year or two ago. Toyota, Honda, GE, BP, etc. There is proof around us, right now, that moving to a more energy-efficient society is economically beneficial. The companies leading the way are experiencing growth.

The left often gets caught up in the global social and scientific arguments--the "best" reasons for doing something. And, there is an underlying element of conservatism to much environmentalism--a desire for natural things to remain the way they are, or a desire for a return to the "good old days" of living in harmony with nature. Like most conservatism it is based as much on wishful thinking and emotion as it is on clear logic.

As a result they miss the tremendous economic argument FOR beginning a response to global warming. And they often miss the glaring precedents for government action. A great one is the mandated move to digital TV over the air. Here is a situation where the government identified a precious resource and regulated to enforce its conservation and more efficient use. Is anyone expecting this to cripple the TV industries? No of course not--everyone is going to have to buy new TV equipment (broadcast and consumer), and it represents an opportunity to design upsells--DVRs and HDTV. It's a classic example of government regulation spurring economic growth through innovation and transformation.

This article is not challenging peer-reviewed articles. Rather, it is challenging Gore's (and the political left's in general) interpretations.

Ohh? So why is the first part of the article about pointing out that only a very small fraction of [Gore's "majority of scientists"] actually work in the climate field?

Silly me, it's to discredit peer-reviewed articles based on who wrote them, not to challenge them on the content.

Funny is, the first guy he quotes as a "one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts" is actually "a palaeontologist, stratigrapher and marine geologist." [cos.com] So his qualifacations as a climateologist (as opposed to the very large fraction" of "Gore's scientists") is basically that he agrees with him.

If there are sufficient grounds to question the research that has been published thus far, I would expect that it would not be difficult to promote a dissenting work.

If you're dissenting opinion was financed by Exxon and the oil lobby, I can guarantee it will get published. Not only that but it will get picked up by the popular press because Exxon's PR firm will be working their press contacts for ink.

You can buy any kind of research results you want if you have enough money. I used to see tobacco companies do it all the time when I was in contract research. You'll be able to buy some really big name scientists and get the conclusions you want. They'll justify the intellectual prostitution by telling themselves that the research they do with the money they get will out-weigh the evil of promoting a position paid for by oil money, or tobacco money or Monsanto or whoever is funding your research center.

Big corporate money is corrupting our government, our research institutions, and our media. Half the fluff pieces you see on the news were produced by some industry group. Probably 90% of the articles you read in trade rags are influenced by an advertiser or their PR firm, it's really getting to the point you can't believe anything you read.

You don't get paid to say "The world isn't going to end." There's no profit in it.

On the contrary, the Competative Enterprise Institute is paid handsomely by Exxon to shill for them.

Not that they employ actual scientists for this work, they employ people with degrees in economics and classics and political 'science' to scour the academic litterature and cherry pick passages that concur with their masters views.

So maybe this is a stupid question, but isn't Bush against talking about Global Warming? Hasn't he, in fact, had reports that mention global warming suppressed or altered? Isn't the government in fact entirely run by people who are actively hostile to the idea that there is such a thing as global warming?

If so, then where the hell is all this funding you're talking about *coming* from? Doing research that backs up the theory of Global Warming is a great way to avoid getting your research funded next year, not a great way to ensure that you keep your job for a long time.

The thing that astounds me about this discussion is that back when Clinton was in office, people talked about a huge liberal conspiracy. But the Republicans own the country at this point, top to bottom. When you hear a liberal position expressed in a mainstream environment, it's *despite* the best efforts of the government, not *because* of those efforts. The big conspiracy that I see going on right now is the one that's giving U.S. oilmen record profits, at the cost of relatively few American lives and a lot of non-American lives.

I don't know whether the idea of global warming is true - I haven't watched the movie, and honestly don't have a lot of faith that a movie intended to sway the American public is going to tell me anything I haven't already heard. But what I do know is that this theory that global warming is some kind of conspiracy of control is just a stupid invention of Michael Crichton, not a real thing that's actually happening.

If they have solid scientific evidence to refute the solid scientific evidence in support of global warming, then they should publish it. If they don't, then as scientists they should know better than to spout off without any proof of their claims.

Absolutely. I attended a lecture at the Tyndall centre, Manchester a few weeks ago. In a room full of climate change experts, in the UK centre for climate change research, nobody was even remotely sceptical about the realism of Global Warming.

In fact, the point that shocked me most was that some of them were quite content that it was already too late to mitagate the effects, by a token reduction in our emissions. Argueing that the global strategy should be to prepare for the change that will happen rather than waste money trying to stop it!

Absolutely. I attended a lecture at the Tyndall centre, Manchester a few weeks ago. In a room full of climate change experts, in the UK centre for climate change research, nobody was even remotely sceptical about the realism of Global Warming.

Without going into my opinion on this matter at all... have you listened to yourself?

You went to a room filled with "climate change experts." By this very definition, you're talking about people who believe in global warming ("climate change"). And then it's supposed to mean something that none of them is skeptical about global warming?

So, I went to church last week and was in a room with a bunch of experts on religion. None were remotely skeptical about God. Therefore, he must be real.

there's a little something missing in your analogy. the experts you mention must be insanely knowledgable about their fields such that they know not just the base fact, but also the cause, the methodologies, and the cures. i could go a paragraph for each, but let's just look at the radiologist...

His job is not just to say "your leg is broken." it's to figure out where, why, and how badly, and to advise your Attending Physician on reasonable cures. Is this a break that can easily be set, requiring little more than a cast and some aspirin? Or are you in need of more invasive surgery, a few screws, and a lifetime of setting off metal detectors? The radiologist doesn't necessarily decide this, but his report detail is crucial to your attending.

From the perspective of watching you hobble into the hospital, five radiologists will all decide that you have a broken leg. From their own anecdotal experience, all five will have differing opinions of the severity and of the treatment. One will tell you that since you can still walk (however poorly), it's not bad and you just need some anti-inflammatories and bed rest, and that the hairline fracture will heal itself. Another will decide your distinctive gait betrays a severe fracture with nerve damage, and you are at risk of losing your leg if not rushed into surgery immediately. With all likelihood, however, these experts will probably agree on all counts after looking at the X-Ray.

When it comes to climate change, Climate Change Experts in 2006 are a lot like these radiologists before the X-Ray. None of the doctors disagreed about whether your leg was broken - they differed on the severity and treatment. CCEs don't doubt the existance of climate change or global warming, but there is a tremendous amount of discourse about the causes and cures. We have at least three possible causes, all of which have mounds of evidence to support them.

CCEs don't doubt the existance of climate change or global warming, but there is a tremendous amount of discourse about the causes and cures.

No, in fact there really isn't that much disagreement among the climate science community about causes - anthropogenic emissions are nearly universally acknowledged as a very important contribution to the current warming trend. There is, however, an active effort by people opposed to any common-sense measures to mitigate the risks to make distinctly minority viewpoints appear common. This is abetted by our media's desire to play up any controversy. As in "Is global warming real? Tonight at 11 we find out ask our viewers. We report, you decide."

A telling statistic about this is in Gore's movie. They did a random sample of scientific peer reviewed papers on global warming. Of 932 samples, ZERO disagreed with the conclusion that global warming was happening and was man made. On the other hand 56% of the articles on the subject they randomly surveyed said the jury was still out.

This is the long standing problem in the media of false equivalency. They take any issue and assume that there are two sides and that both sides have similar standing. So if 932 peer reviewed scientific papers say that global warming is happening and humans are causing it, and there's 932 articles written by crackpots and industry lobbyists saying the opposite, the media treat this as being two equivlanet sides of an issue. It makes good copy, but it's incredibly desceptive.

My answer is simple. What reason does he have to make this shit up? What reason does he have to distory the reality of this. Has being interested in this subject bought him anything in his political career? On the other hand, the people who argue the opposite point stand to gain a hell of a lot from making this all seem like BS.

"Yes they do. They have to point to flaws and holes in the current theory, otherwise they're just gasbagging."

And if they're gasbagging, then they are just spewing hot air, which contributes to global warming. Therefore, if those opposed to the global warming theory (that man is responsible) aren't pointing to flaws and holes, then they are contributing to the problem they oppose by increasing global warmth. A bit circular, but fun to write nonetheless.

such as the temperatures recorded at sites that used to be in rural areas, but are now in suburban or urban areas, due to the growth of cities.

The heat-island effect has been well-handled since the mid-90's. There was a period of about five years where satelite measurements and ground measurements were inconsistent, but now multiple methods, including ice core data, are consistent.

One of the cardinal diagnostics of a crank is that they bring up past disputes and problems as if they had never been resolved, and refuse to look at the details of how they were resolved.

That's not how the scientific process works. You can't prove a negative.

Science is all about proving negatives. Indeed, the only thing ever proven in science is that a model is wrong. A scientific theory, even one that has been granted the vaunted title of a "law", is simply a hypothesis which explains the available evidence better than alternatives and which could conceivably be shown to be wrong, has been vigorously attempted to be proven wrong, and failed to be proven wrong.

A scientific theory, even one that has been granted the vaunted title of a "law"

I am not going to disagree with anything you say here because I would say it is all entirely correct. However, from what I remember of my history of science, nothing gets the label of "law" anymore, only "Theory". Law was the original name used to signify scientific "laws" in the 1700s-1800s IIRC.

It was changed to "Theory" in the 1900's as some "laws" had been disproven. So, in fact, the term "Law" is depricated, and has been replaced by theory.

This of course, causes consternation for scientists when creationists decry evolution as a "theory" and not a "law".

(Sorry for the lack of exact date ranges, I don't remember the specifics from history of science, and of course, I have none of the material at hand at the moment.)

Some models do a much better job than others, but there are very few facts.

There are a lot of facts. It is how one interprets those facts that
is the problem.

For example.

It is a fact that a gas bubble trapped in arctic
ice at a certain depth contained 3.4% carbon dioxide. (That's an example of a fact, not necessarily true.)

It is a fact that ice in that region acreted at a rate of 0.3 m/year over the last year. (It was measured.)

It is not a fact that the age of the bubble is depth/0.3 years. That requires an assumption that the
acretion rate was constant, and is not itself a fact.

It is likewise not a fact that the atmosphere at the time the bubble was captured (whenever that was) was 3.4% carbon dioxide. It requires an assumption that there is no mechanism that would result in a change of concentration of various gases trapped in ice.

Similarly:

It is a fact that the average temperature of a certain region of land is X degrees today. That was measured.

It is a fact that the average temperature of the same piece of land last year was Y degrees. It, too, was measured.

It is not a fact that the temperature of that same piece of land was Z degrees four hundred years ago. A) there was no measurement taken then, and B) the estimates are based on measurements of other things and then assumptions about how they relate to temperature. It is those assumtions that changes Z from a fact into a theory.

It is not a fact that the piece of land is X-Y degrees warmer that it used to be, even though both X and Y are facts. There is no knowledge that the means of measuring X and Y were the same, so one or the other or both may have a deterministic error. For example, satellite temperature measurements are regularly refined to take into account various factors that had not been previously. The change in how the data were processed may result in a bogus "increase" in temperature (or a similar bogus "decrease".)

Yes, there are lots of facts. It is important to differentiate between
what is a fact and what is a theory. "Global warming" and "anthropogenically caused global warming" are both theories.

The average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans is showing a rapid upward trend. The polar ice caps are melting due to temperature rises. The sea level is rising due to melting polar ice and thermal expansion of the oceans. The evidence for this is readily available.

I just thought that I'd point out that if the ice melts at the north pole, the sea level won't rise. It's already displacing its equivalent mass in seawater. Obviously there are other implications, though.

Also, the average temperature of the planet has increased by 1 degree C since the late 1800s. The grounded Antarctic ice cap grew between 1992 and 2003, lessening any sea level increase by about 0.12mm per year . Thermal expansion represents roughly 120mm of MSL for a 1 degree temperature increase. The evidence for this is readily available - I just Googled it.

That's only true if all the ice was in the water (to displace it). What about if it's above the water? That ice will contribute to sea levels.

Actually, no. Assuming that the ice is made of water that (when melted) has the same density as the original water, then the water level will remain unchanged when the ice melts.
Awhile back I wrote a brief handout [gilroyphysics.net] for my AP Physics course that goes through a proof of this. (There are others, probably clearer.) Of course, there are simplifications. For example, I assume the water densities are the same (but glacial ice is freshwater and so melts to a lower density) and that the melting of the ice doesn't impact the temperature of the water enough to influence its density.

More important that all of that, of course, is the fact that while the arctic ice pack sits on water, the antarctic one sits largely on land... and that Greenland also supports a significant ice pack. Since these are supported by the land (not buoyant force), when they melt, they would significantly raise the waterlevel globally.

2) CO2 dissolves in water3) The oceans are water4) CO2 dissolves in the oceans5) When CO2 dissolves in water the PH of the water goes down6) When the PH of the water goes down, Calcium Carbonate concentrations go down7) When calcium carbonate levels go down the plankton dies8) When the plankton dies, so does everything else by starvation9) Ergo, people who think disproving global warming will let them drive their hummers without killing their own species, and a lot of others with it, are total asswipes.

If we ignore all other hypothesis and we turn out to be wrong with the whole CO2 thing, then we're going to spend some incomprehensible number of dollars reducing our CO2 output over the next 100 years for no gain[emphasis mine].

I have two responses to this:1) The notion that there's no gain from reducing carbon emissions - even in the unlikely event that there turns out to be no effect on long-term global temperatures - is patently absurd. Offhand I can name benefits: improved air quality with attendant lower of non-carbon aerosols like mercury and uranium (which would lead to lower incidence of many diseases), less acidification of lakes and other bodies of water, reduction of ecosystem damage in bodies of water like the Gulf of Mexico (large stretches of which are now hypoxic to anoxic), an extraordinary leap in energy efficiency as a generation of industrial machines are upgraded to modern versions, and finally a reduction in global economic instability as energy sources are made more distributed. And that's just off the top of my head. So it's hard to argue that this money is a vast waste.

2) There is a very simple and very reliable way to approach situations where the outcomes are not well known: risk analysis. Every day, all over the world, people assess the severity of risks and the likelihood of that contingency occurring. By basically multiplying (convolving, whatever you like) the risk by the severity of the outcome, you get a good metric for whether to try to mitigate a particular risk. In this case, the risks (as Gore's movie well illustrates) are extraordinary, so even those with less likelihood merit active mitigation strategies. And given that the conversion from emitting to non-emitting energy sources does not require science particularly beyond our grasp to accomplish, it's impossible to argue that we can't take active steps to mitigate the risk. So why do the same people who employ risk mitigation all over the place (e.g. insurance, tort "reform") argue so furiously against anything like this on a large scale?

Finally, it bears mentioning that the scientists in this article (only two of who are named) are an extraordinary minority - the vast bulk of climate scientists (and I know many personally, thanks to a degree in ocean physics) are in agreement that human activities are contributing to global warming. So while these folks are entitled to their opinions, scientific or otherwise, it's pretty misleading of this here Canada Free Press to present them as a mainstream view.

"In 1942 and 1980 the global mean temperature was approximately the same. In every year between those two the mean temperature was lower than those years. Since CO2 output was continuing to increase during this period of nearly four decades, why didn't the global mean temperature increase as well?"

You put your finger right on the problem for the "CO2 is all of it" crowd. From the late '30s to the mid-70's the temperature went down. The CO2 believers have no explanation. The solar cycle people do.

Right now, both camps say we should be hot. We are. In 2020, the CO2 people say we'll be hotter than now, and the solar cycle people say we'll be cooling down. So the argument will be settled then.

From the late '30s to the mid-70's the temperature went down. The CO2 believers have no explanation.

Pay better attention then. [wikipedia.org] In summary, human-caused particulate emissions reflect sunlight, offsetting some of the effects of CO2-caused warming. In the past couple decades, this type of pollution has lessened, allowing the CO2-caused warming to reveal itself in all its glory.

I don't have the proof in front of me, and frankly, I don't see how it's my responsibility to find it for you. It's in several published papers--if you're in the field you'll know how to find them. The models that are projecting increased temperatures--and pointing a finger at CO2 as an important forcing in that trend--are capable of simulating the temperature trends of the 20th century. In fact one even correctly predicted the affect of an eruption--confirmed by Pinatubo in 1991.

Of course if you were in the field you'd also know that there are many more forcings than just CO2 that affect the global mean temp. You'd also know that a chaotic systems don't respond linearly. You'd probably also know that although there have been cool years and hot years since the beginning of the 20th century, the overall delta to now is clearly positive. And presumably you'd understand that global trends are not local trends, therefore local anecdotes like the 1969 hurricane season do not prove or disprove global mean phenomena.

That's not how the scientific process works. You can't prove a negative. The onus is on the supporters of the global warming theory to come up with extremely strong evidence for their claims, they just haven't done so.

That's also not how the scientific process works. This isn't about "proving a negative", it's about "invalidating an existing hypothesis" which is the basis of scientific progress. Scientists spend lots of time running experiments trying to prove than an opponents theory is wrong. Part of becoming a generally accepted "theory" is having lots of people try to invalidate your hypothesis and failing to do so. Indeed, the thing that's impossible to prove is that the hypothesis is valid. "Oh, sure, it looks like solar radiation can cause skin cancer, but can you prove that some as-yet unfound and undetected external force isn't responsible?"

Yes, if you're going to advance a hypothesis you need to find some evidence to support it, but if you're waiting for "extremely strong evidence" you're in for a long, long wait in just about any scientific endeavor.

Also, I wonder what their model would do 450 million years ago when C02 levels were 10X what they are today, but the earth was extremely cold.

This was actually a result of an unrelated phenomenon (which I will call "the Skyshadow Effect" over and over again until people start calling it that). It's somewhat technical, but it essentially breaks down to a simple fact: The past was cold.

This is actually pretty obvious once you consider the evidence: Any time you complained to your dad as a kid about how cold it was in the house, he would respond by telling you about how cold it was when he was a kid, right? Blizzards, snow dozens of feet deep, etc. Try complaining to a grandparent, and the stories were even worse -- my grandpa Harry used to have to deal with wooly mammoths as he walked 203 miles to work each morning at 3:30 AM in Milwaukee*.

Carrying out a few simple calculations based on the Skyshadow Effect, we see that 450 million years ago must have been really cold. To give you an idea of what we're talking about, noon at the equator must have been nearly as cold as the inside of your car in the morning in January when the steering wheel is so cold it hurts through your gloves to grip. It was only this hugely increased amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere that allowed life on earth to continue -- any colder and it would have just sat inside with a mug of hot chocolate watching reruns of I Love Lucy.

* This is, of course, related to the supporting theories about how the past was (1) earlier in the day and (2) farther apart than in modern times, but as this is not strictly relevant to this discussion we'll leave it be for now.

Probably the best hour I've spent recently. The last speaker actually published an article in Nature specifically talking about the media's miscoverage of this issue. To sum up; there is no debate on global warming. The debate is on the details.

From the description in on google:

Renowned science scholar Naomi Oreskes and science producer Gene Rosow discuss how Hollywood and the news media portray global warming and... all what responsibility scientists have to educate the public about global warming.

Sure you can measure it and determine any change, but that doesn't tell you what caused that change. The unfortunate thing about climatology is that we can't do any simple experiments to test the individual factors to determine which are really important.

Which is exactly the point. Society has decided not to hear them. I have personally known holocaust survivors/avoiders so I have firsthand knowledge that it happened, but I believe that we should allow deniers to state their cases so that we can pick them apart.

We have, they have, and their cases have been picked apart, over and over again. There is only a finite amount of time and manpower available for discussing issues, and so inevitably one has to prioritize. Issues that have already been beaten to death are naturally going to be deprioritized so that more productive topics can be attended to instead.

Or to put it another way, the Holocaust deniers have the right to spout their nonsense as much as they like (in the US, anyway) to anyone who wants to listen, but they don't have the right to perpetually DOS everybody else's brain cycles with their spam.

The site costs about $500/month, between what I pay an editor and the cost of the dedicated server. I am not running any advertising at the moment, so that's all out of my pocket. I didn't "ban" this particular article, indeed the link to it is still on my front page, along with my message of deprecation.

Like any editor, I can "ban" whoever I want. Freedom of speech does not obligate anyone to give you a podium. And like any good editor, I exercise the obligation to filter for my readers.

When has sincerity become a barometer of fact? I'm not sure you're serious, but I'll answer as if you were. If the speaker is insincere, that is a really strong indication that you should question the message and look for what they have to hide. Sure, a sincere speaker can be wrong. But if only funded speakers are taking a particular position, that generally means that someone is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

This article was pulled straight from the headlines of the Drudge Report, which should have tipped you off. He's notorious for linking to only right-wing-skewed news services [wikipedia.org], and here he's tapping an obscure Canadian newspaper. Gee, I wonder which way its politics lean? You should have done your homework...

There is only one other article [canadafreepress.com] by Tom Harris at CFP, but I found another at National Post [canada.com], both attacking climate change. Canada Free Press [wikipedia.org] and National Post [wikipedia.org] are both conservative newspapers, particularly the latter. According to the byline, Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group. And what is the High Park Group [highparkgroup.com], seeing as how their web page say absolutely nothing of substance? Why it's an industry shill [stikeman.com].

Mr. Egan is president of the High Park Group, a public policy consulting firm that focuses largely on energy issues out of its offices in Toronto and Ottawa. He is retained by the Canadian Electricity Association on a range of issues, including U.S. advocacy (monitoring the U.S. Congress and Administration on issues of interest to the Canadian electricity industry).

Dig a little deeper and you'll find this [sierraclub.ca] from way back in 2002. It has quite a bit more to say.

If you know more say so.

Of course, articles about "scientists" refuting global warming are a dime a dozen, and go against the plain fact that the vast majority of climate scientists are firmly convinced of its existence.

And for the record when I looked at the article before it was running an ad pushing Condaleeza Rice for president... in a Canadian newspaper no less.

Your post has not been modded up but your incorrect parent has been modded up as insightful. The thing is, both of you are half-right.

The fact is he did make the claim, but not in reference to actually creating the technology but in popularizing its use within Congress. Taken out of context it's easy to say that Gore is a boob (and he very well may be but he's been on Futurama so he's cool in my book! I admit I'm biased by Futurama.;)) but within the context he's right, in sponsoring certain bills (I don't recall them now) and so forth. However he hypes up his puny contributions which really, in the face of Tim Berners-Lee's contributions, compared to Gopher, Marc Andreessen and Jamie Zawinski's browser (Mosaic), and the first commercial ISPs, are far, far overblown.

Either way, making fun of Al Gore's statement is funny and it always will be. It really is the web browser and businesses' embracing the web which popularized the Internet and led to what we have today, aside from the infrastructure itself.

You seem to be implying that all Al Gore did was go to Congress sometime in the 90's and say, "Hey guys, this Internet thing is really cool!". As other posters have pointed out, some of the core innovators in what we now call the Internet credit Gore for his work at making the Internet what it is. I trust them more than I trust you.

The inventor of the Mosaic Browser, Marc Andreesen, credits Gore with making his work possible. He received a federal grant through Gore's High Performance Computing Act.

That bill passed in 1988, several years before you started using the net (not that your personal experience matters at all on this issue).

Some nice things that that bill did, besides sponsor Andreesen? It set up a national computing plan, it linked research centers and universities across the country, and it funded a lot of other important research.

Did Al Gore invent the internet? No. He did sponsor the bills that provided funding and vision for some key components of it, though.

BTW, to say you were there to see the Internet created, and then say you've been on the Internet since 1990 is idiotic. The net's been around a lot longer than that. The ARPANET, which is what evolved into the Internet, has been around since 1969. Email came along in 1972. TCP/IP a year later, and things just grew from there. Let me quote from A Brief History of the Internet [isoc.org]

Thus, by 1985, Internet was already well established as a technology supporting a broad community of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by other communities for daily computer communications.

What is probably true is that your first exposure to the Internet came because of a project that was made possible by the bills that Al Gore sponsored. So, think of it from your own point of view - you got to use the Internet in 1990 because of Al Gore.

In 2000 when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as your 43rd president, I knew the road ahead would be difficult. We have accomplished so much yet challenges lie ahead.

In the last 6 years we have been able to stop global warming. No one could have predicted the negative results of this. Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack.

As you know, these renegade glaciers have already captured parts of upper Michigan and northern Maine, but I assure you: we will not let the glaciers win.

Right now, in the 2nd week of May 2006, we are facing perhaps the worst gas crisis in history.

We have way too much gasoline. Gas is down to $0.19 a gallon and the oil companies are hurting.

I know that I am partly to blame by insisting that cars run on trash.

I am therefore proposing a federal bailout to our oil companies because - hey if it were the other way around, you know the oil companies would help us.

On a positive note, we worked hard to save Welfare, fix Social Security and of course provide the free universal health care we all enjoy today.

But all this came at a high cost. As I speak, the gigantic national budget surplus is down to a perilously low $11 trillion dollars.

And don't get any ideas. That money is staying in the very successful lockbox. We're not touching it.

Of course, we could give economic aid to China, or lend money to the Saudis... again.

But right now we're already so loved by everyone in the world that American tourists can't even go over to Europe anymore... without getting hugged.

There are some of you that want to spend our money on some made-up war. To you I say: what part of "lockbox" don't you understand?

What if there's a hurricane or a tornado? Unlikely I know because of the Anti-Hurricane and Tornado Machine I was instrumental in helping to develop.

But... what if? What if the scientists are right and one of those giant glaciers hits Boston? That's why we have the lockbox!

As for immigration, solving that came at a heavy cost, and I personally regret the loss of California. However, the new Mexifornian economy is strong and el Presidente Schwarznegger is doing a great job.

There have been some setbacks. Unfortunately, the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Michael Moore was bitter and devisive. However, I could not be more proud of how the House and Senate pulled together to confirm the nomination of Chief Justice George Clooney.

Baseball, our national passtime, still lies under the shadow of steroid accusations. But I have faith in baseball commissioner George W. Bush when he says, "We will find the steroid users if we have to tap every phone in America!"

In 2001 when I came into office, our national security was the most important issue. The threat of terrorism was real.

Who knew that six years later, Afghanistan would be the most popular Spring Break destination? Or that Six Flags Tehran is the fastest growing amusement park in the Middle East?

And the scariest thing we Americans have to fear is... Live From New York, its Saturday Night!

I found it interesting a bit back when it was reported the ice caps were diminishing on Mars due to its own "global warming." When a scientific issue becomes politically charged it is the most vulnerable to misconstrued notions. Perhaps scientists should leave politics to politians (which they mostly do) and, indeed, politicians should leave science where it belongs too. There are plenty of other reasons to want to end the usage of fossil fuels without mentioning global warming. Mr. Gore, please stick to what's sure and not what's "the buzz"....

As long as certain groups stand to profit, and as long as certain people might look like idiots if proven wrong, the debate on this topic will never end. I'm talking about people on either side of the issue. The tough part is that global warming is difficult to prove either positively or negatively, so it's a prime vehicle for unrelated agendas.

From the story:
"For quite a while global warming has been presented in the public forum as a universally accepted scientific reality."
This is plainly not true. For as long as the global warming issue has been in the public consciousness, it has been referred to as "the global warming debate". There has always been strong opinion and evidence on both sides of this issue. Where have you been, Arthur Dent?

This sort of dissent has existed for years, ignored by 'all right thinking people', but out there. Looks like Gore's movie has goaded a few of the dissenters to go on the record and risk destroying their careers. Gotta salute the poor brave but doomed bastards.

But what I'm amazed at is Slashdot actually accepting a dissenting opinion as an actual article submission instead of this being posted as a reply to a glowing review of the film.

a quick google for the researcher the article focuses on [google.com] shows that he doesn't publish. his main credits are online opinion pieces, and the closes thing to a publication i found (the second page of the google) is a.doc file on his labratory's webspace

if anyone can find anything peer-reviewed by this guy, i'd be keen to see it

Would you rather trust a professor who is on Exxon's payroll, or Science magazine (one of the most respected academic journals in the world)? Because here's what Science magazine has to say about the debate:

Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

Some people would consider Prof. Carter to be an organ of said corporations.

Of course it's entirely possible that Prof. Carter is correct, as the Science article points out. But in light of the evidence, I'm inclined to think that this is a FUD campaign rather than a sound argument from a trusted authority.

With all due respect, that's simply an ad hominem attack. What are the criticisms of the content of his findings? It seems to me he clearly cites named sources, instead of "climate experts". I don't know where the truth lies with global warming. I suspect it lies somewhere in the middle of the crusaders on both sides.

No it's not. He cites a few sources, and uses phrases such as, "Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change" to puff up the claims. Claims coming from a source who doesn't seem to even publish his own research for peer review. How is he even remotely considered a credible source? This is what the industries who pollute the most want everyone to believe. They have all sorts of "scientists" making statements to the press about how their research doesn't support global warming theories, yadda yadda. But since they aren't allowing their research to be peer reviewed (assuming they've even done any research) why should we believe them over the ones that are peer reviewed?

How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought. It is remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research. Discussion of recent changes in Antarctica and Greenland are expertly laid out. He also does a very good job in talking about the relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane intensity. As one might expect, he uses the Katrina disaster to underscore the point that climate change may have serious impacts on society, but he doesn't highlight the connection any more than is appropriate.

Eric Steig is an isotope geochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. His primary research interest is use of ice core records to document climate variability in the past. He also works on the geological history of ice sheets, on ice sheet dynamics, on statistical climate analysis, and on atmospheric chemistry.

... that of a huge sample of 900+ *peer reviewed* papers about climate change, 0 contested that it was occuring or that it was a result of humans.

It would be almost impossible to say that no scientist disagreed with these claims. There will always be somebody. There are still some "scientists" who claim that the Sun revolves around the earth because of their positions in whatever religious institutions they belong to.

If they want to contest the points in his movie, that's obviously fine... but also let them publish their claims in a peer reviewed journal so that people smarter than most of us can judge them.

That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts,published in refereed scientific journals between 1993and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords"climate change"

So they just grabbed everything, and evaluated the papers' position on the consensus view of global warming. 75% Implictly or explicitly supported it, 25% did not offer a position (mostly these were methods papers detailing a method not a result, or paleoclimate papers that did not deal with current climate issues), and 0% disagreed with the consensus view.

And to be specific, the consensus view is "Human activities... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents... that absorb or scatter radiant energy.... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), or equivalently, "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." from the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, the National Academy of Sciences, The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science all have issued statements that agree with the IPCC. These aren't rinky-dink outfits, they are the cream of the crop of academic science, noble laureates, etc.

The fact that you can find a small number of cranks to claim that global warming is "debatable" really means very little, see Flat Earth Society [wikipedia.org], etc etc. The scientific community as a whole has made up their mind, and it is clear that global warming caused by humans is occuring.

It is too late for this argument; global warming is here. Salon is running a great series called
Reports from a Warming Planet [salon.com]. They provide a free daypass - please read a couple of the reports, at least.

I'm sure I'll hear that the plural of anecdote is not data, that it is too expensive to fix, that we should throw up our hands and accept things. Global warming is not happening; and even if it is, we didn't do it; and so what if we did, so what - we should write off Bangladesh [sepiamutiny.com], forget the polar bears, and be happy to grow wheat in Canada instead. Sure. But please, read some of these stories [salon.com].

Mankind's desire to blame itself for this occurrance is, I think, I misplaced attempt to delude ourselves into thinking we are more powerful than we really are.
Thank you for your attempt at global armchair psychology. Please look at this graph from the NOAA. [140.172.192.211]

While you personally may be convinced, I and a host of climatologists are not and I would thank you to stop spending my money on your fantasies.
Fantasies? Strong words! Would you care to identify this "host" of climatologists for the rest of slashdot? I wonder why they have no peer-reviewed publications in the last 3 years? Must be the bias of their peers. Yeah, that's it.

even if it is occurring, you, me, them... we'll all be dead before it's a real problem.
Yes, like I said above,
"Global warming is not happening; and even if it is, we didn't do it; and so what if we did, so what - we should write off Bangladesh, forget the polar bears, and be happy to grow wheat in Canada instead." Sure.

Somehow, this is all about fear and foot dragging - how can you not see the staggering advances in clean technology that are possible if we put our minds to it? Why such a defeatist, can't do attitude?

(I really don't have the time or energy to personally argue this with you - I apologize in advance.)

Be aware that the website hosting the article is a far-right broadsheet, the Canadian equivalent of Free Republic [freerepublic.com]. Their agenda is strongly anti-global-warming, which doesn't necessarily discredit the article, but does suggest that one should view it with the same scepticism as one views the recent 'ads' by the Competitive Enterprise Institute [cei.org].

I'm a computer programmer but a formally trained Marine Biology major. In that, I took a season of Oceanography. What is IMPORTANT for the layman to understand here is that we have these cycles that one must understand FIRST. Every 10 years or so, there is a drying pattern in California that leads to drought. There are 10, 20, 50 and 100 year overlapping cycles of temperature, moisture, etc... cycling that happen everywhere in the world. Some areas have droughts every 10 years, some every 20. And sometimes, areas that have 100 year cycles and 10 year cycles overlap to be particularly worse. These time-scales are so large that 1 or three bad years do not definitely mean "OMG! Global warming is here!" It is very important for people to know that, especially when it is June and and already 100 degrees every day in Texas. There are also years where there are more hurricanes and hurricanes of greater severity as well as years with less.

It would do everyone well to look up a book on Oceanography and read how the ocean affects climate. It's just one chapter. Hit your local library.

Now, with that understanding under your belt, animal populations in the aquatic world (read: schools of fish) are fed by the ocean conveyor belt bring nutrient depleted hot water down to the bottom and causing the nutrient rich cold water to flow up. This feeds the krill and shrimp and plankton and they are eaten by bigger fish and so on. If this conveyor is stopped, all fisheries dependent upon it in the world are screwed and we don't know what will happen but it's most likely not good.

Climate (hotness, moisture, rainfall) affects food growers the world over. If the climate patterns change, it will mostly be destabilizing to farmers and that is bad. Less food, rising prices.

Everything we are doing to influence climate change builds up momentum towards that change. It may be slow but once it is started, it is hard to slow down and reverse. 1 degree difference in the entire ocean is a huge difference. Also, unlike us, water temperature in many parts of the ocean is constant to a few degrees. If it changes faster then the critters can handle, they die.

Once you know the rules upon which the ocean works and how it creates climate, running fast and lose with stuff that might change it is hugely dangerous and irresponsible to take a chance on. More moist warm air in places it wasn't before means more tornados and hurricanes in places they haven't been before. More extreme weather in general. This means more insurance claims and that means higher insurance costs factored into the economy.

Most of the times in America, we wait for disasters to happen before we spend enormous amounts off money and time to fix them. I don't want to be a betting man with our affect on the entire climate of the Earth. Calving icebergs the entire size of Rhode Island is not something normal. If we want Florida, New Orleans, Manhattan, Holland or those small islands in the pacific to be around in 50 years and have enough food to eat, I would not expect it to be if we (the US) and China (the largest emerging polluting market)do not take radical steps to curb global warming pollutants. It's that simple.

Why do we have to wait for 100% certainty before we act? While it is true that the theory of global warming is uncertain, that is a scientifically unfair statement to make. In order to scientifically validate the theory of global warming one hundred percent, it would have to be observed.

There isn't any conclusive evidence for theories on how gravity propagates. We have theories; special relativity space-time warping, string/m-theory transmitting gravitons. However no one can explain with 100% certainty why gravity works. So the theory of gravity lacks certainty. But last I checked, if I were to jump, gravity from the Earth would cancel out my force and return me to the ground. So yup, Gravity still works despite not having certainty behind theory.

According to the scientific process, we'll have to observe global warming in a biosphere before the theory will gain certainty. Last I checked we did not have a spare biosphere hanging around, or millions of years to test, or a spare Earth somewhere in orbit where we can conduct long term testing in order to satisfy the scientific method.

I am all for the scientific process and honestly wish it were used in more cases in every day life. However, in some cases, especially in those studies that overlap the lifespan of scientists, I feel it is ok to act without certainty in cases where the speculative evidence supports the theory. Say it with me now: Supporting evidence in the case where no alternative evidence exists wins everytime. In other words, just like the theory of gravity, lack of 100% certainity does not make the opposite true.

Despite whether or not global warming is a real phenomenon, not acting now would be like driving without auto or medical insurance. Sure, you might make it home safe, but you might also get hit by a drunk driver in a 4 ton truck with no insurance. Our laws require insurance for that reason. Why don't we start insuring the Earth with pre-emptive care?

Science Magazine analyzed a total of 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming between 1993 and 2003.
Number that challenged the consensus that global warming is real and caused by human activity: zero.
Scientists don't debate whether global warming is occurring, or even that it's caused by humans. Only politicians do.

Check out the Union of Concerned Scientist website. The Union's members are from varied fields of science, but many of its members are atmospheric scientists. The Union concludes that global warming is strongly support by available evidence.
[ucsusa.org]http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/ [ucsusa.org]

From the article:Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change.

What a weaselly way of putting it. Here's what 30 seconds of Googling says about Professor Robert Carter: He's a member of the Institute for Public Affairs, a corporate-funded think tank.

You see, he isn't working for the coal industry per se. He's working for a think tank that is funded by corporate donors that may or may not include the coal industry. See the difference?

In piling up scientist after scientist while failing to refute Gore's arguments, this article is reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda pamphlet "100 Scientists Against Einstein." Einstein's response still applies: "If I were wrong, one would be enough."

Furthermore, even though the FCP article tries to paint Carter as an independent, ExxonSecrets.org links him to "Tech Central Science Foundation or Tech Central Station". Here's what the site lists as their details:

ExxonMobil gave the Foundation $95,000 in 2003 for "Climate Change Support." According to Guidestar.org, a nonprofit research tool, the Foundation had 2003 income of $150,000 and $110,903 in assets. The Foundation commissioned a study by Charles River Associates alleging that the costs of the McCain-Lieberman bill of 2003 would be a minimum of $350 annually per household through 2010, rising to $530 per household by 2020, and could rise to as high as $1,300 per year per household. Related information: Tech Central Station was launched in 1999 as "a cross between a journal of Internet opinion and a cyber think tank open to the public" (TCS news release). According to Washington Monthly, TCS is published by the DCI Group, 'a prominent Washington public affairs firm specializing in P.R., lobbying, and so-called 'Astroturf' organizing, generally on behalf of corporations, GOP politicians, and the occasional Third-World despot." TCS shares office space, staff and ownership with DCI Group. ('Meet the Press' Washington Monthly, December 2003. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/031 2.confessore.html [washingtonmonthly.com]) Corporate funders of Tech Central Station include AT&T, Avue Technologies, The Coca-Cola Company, General Motors Corporation, Intel, McDonalds, Merck, Microsoft, Nasdaq, PhRMA, and Qualcomm (Tech Central Station website).

The entire Canadian Free Press article loses credibility because of this line:

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change.

A non-industry expert who works for a place that's paid for by Exxon.

I can't believe this article got posted on the main page. I guess since Al Gore's in a movie, posting some already-been-written article quoting a few paid shills who say he's lying had to be done to keep things politically balanced. I personally think news links should only be posted if they actually represent reality.

We all know that you can find any opinion on any topic on the internet and that you have to be more careful then ever about your sources. So, if slashdot is going to refer to articles on controversial issues, shouldn't it stick to sources that have some authority or respect?

I wouldn't be surprised if Gore did go to far - few things are as certain as they are presented to us by either side. However, the article goes way too far and ignores the fact that the general concensus of the scientific community is in line with what Gore is saying.

So, it makes me wonder what this strange website is? It is run out of my city (Toronto) and yet I've never heard of it. I don't see a bio of the author on the website, but I note that the two main authors involved in this website are from the Toronto Sun and Fox News. I don't need to say anthing about FOX, but you might not have heard of the Toronto Sun. It is a right wing tabloid, featuring girly pictures on page 2. You probably have one in your city, so you know what I mean.

I'd say it's pretty obvious where they're coming from. Slashdot's really going to hell. This is a sample from just their front page:

"The images are slowly coalescing out of the smoke of the progressive anti-war campfires, the bonfires in New Jersey, where our Constitution and Ann Coulter's latest book are being consumed by the current purveyors of charitable lock-step liberalism, and from the super heated mind of Howard Dean, the showman extraordinaire and carpet gnawing Democratic spokesman deluxe."

"Once again, the gay marriage issue has come before the Senate. And with no surprise, Senators motioned to strike down a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. What a sad state the Senate has become! It should have been a no-brainer to stand up in the defense of marriage! "

'As the price of gasoline and the myriad products that utilize petroleum in their manufacture rises, Americans are going to ask why the Congress has resisted accessing the billions of barrels' worth of oil and natural gas in our offshore continental shelf. "

"It's so darned funny and I am such a naïf. I thought it would take a day or two for the left to begin to down play the death of Zarqawi, one of the premier death dealers on the planet today, and a guy responsible for a litany of murder and mayhem among our troops--OUR TROOPS. You know, the guys everybody pledges to support even though the liberal cognoscenti and the progressive Nomenklatura all hate the war."

"Great rivers of destiny are churning just below the Electoral dam.

It looks like the stage is being set for the next round of heartbreak for the Democrats, their quest for 15 seats in the House and their need to overthrow the Republicans in that charnel house of the Senate, should this, their greatest of all electoral endeavors, not pan out."

Please change the title of this article from "Scientists Respond to Gore on Global Warming" to "Industry Shills Respond to Gore on Global Warming". Not that journalistic integrity has ever stopped you from running obviously wrong headlines before; I'm just trying to advise on how to maintain what little dignity you have left.

1. We need to have an energy source that is not based on localized supplies in the middle east (or elsewhere)2. The air around our population centers is polluted by fossil fuel consumption with serious health consequences3. Fossil fuels cannot be used for deep space travel or colonization which is necessary for survival of our species (eventually)4. Fossil fuels are poisonous to mine and refine and harm the workers in those industries and towns.5. Centralized control of energy sources leads to higher prices and a permanent "tax" on economic development and expansion6. Fossil fuels are poisonous to transport and have caused enormous damage to the marine ecology during spills7. Systems used to convert fossil fuels to energy are complicated and wear out quickly. They are expensive to produce and maintain8. Systems used to convert fossil fuels to energy create noise which causes problems in urban environments9. Fossil fuel "control" implies a loss of personal and national liberty

Note that I am not saying that existing alternatives solve any of these problems.

I am saying that there are significant costs/problems to the current energy systems.We have lived with these costs and written them off, but they are still there and still important.

Its worth significant effort to solve these problems. The research to solvethese problems will also likely benefit us in other areas.

It would be far better to solve the problems than to continue to live in anunstable,poisonous,noisy world.

If you'd like to run your own NASA Global Climate Model (GCM) on your own computer, the EdGCM [columbia.edu] project has ported a GCM to Mac & Windows and wrapped it in a GUI so you can point-and-click your way around. Turn the sun down or add some nitrogen, whatever you want...

Technocrat:
"We ran a pointer to a global-warming-doubter story this morning. Here's the link. I decided to pull the story after reviewing the author attribution (he's from a paid political PR agency), and the venue's other coverage on this issue. Sorry."

My initial reaction to this article is that it looks like propaganda. If you read each of the quotes from the scientist in it, you'll noticed that the qualifying adjectives around each of the stated facts in quotations minimize the importance of any observable facts that can't be denied, and the attributive verbs for the quotes are chosen to slant the reader's perception as well.

Climate change experts, like most scientists, tend to be pretty circumspect with their public statements and avoid hyperbole, so the quotes calling Gore "pathetic" and "an embarrassment" are a red flag as well.

Any "feature" article is going to have something of a slant--and there's nothing wrong with that--but the words in article seemed so consistently well-chosen that they seemed vetted by some PR flack versed in the art of using words to sell your opinions to stupid people.

While that's not enough, in itself, to make me disregard the article, it did make me want to see what I could find out about this "Tom Harris" guy who wrote it. Turns out this guy has made something of a cottage industry out of "debunking" global warming, and in at least one case has co-written an article with the Patterson he quotes in this article. He doesn't disclose this fact, although, in fairness, it was written for a "journal" that, amazingly for 2006, has no web presence.

Harris also wrote another article along the same lines as this one, entitled "The Gods Are Laughing", which you can find here:

This one starts out with a lead paragraph that points out that *real* scientists disagree with "liberal arts graduate" Gore about global warming. More red flags here, because people with a good case to make generally don't have to resort to challenging the scientific credentials of their opponents.

The fact that Gore has no PhD in climatology isn't really germane to the debate, although it seems to be a major focus of these pairs of articles. Although once certainly needs some advanced training to conduct climatology research, one would hope that you wouldn't need to go to school for eight years just to be able to read the conclusions section of a peer-reviewed paper. Else, what's the point of doing research, if your findings can only be conveyed to other scientist who are already working from 99.9% of the same knowledge base as you? And one certainly doesn't need a PhD to talk to climatologists and build a consensus view of their opinions.

The director of the atmosphere and energy bits of the Sierra Club of Canada wrote a missive below that explains in more detail a few of the shady rhetorical tricks Harris uses, and which I have alluded to above:

Despite what the headline article claims, and what some posters here sadly believe, human induced planetary heating (global warming just sounds too benign) is real and there is broad consensus across the scientific community on that. sadly the exxon funded shills are paid good money to add layer upon layer of doubt upon this scientific consensus. Its all handled by the same PR people who worked for big tobacco a decade or two ago.

Look at who is the basis for the article, Professor Bob Carter. This man is effectively a spokesman for the energy industry. He gets support from the Australian Institute of Energy. The membership of this agust body is a who's who of the oil, gas, coal, and power companies in Australia. No wonder he thinks the global climate is doing just fine.

If Al Gore wants to run for President in today's political climate, I don't think making a documentary about global warming that leaves him vulnerable to being called a far-left enviro-hippy is really the best strategy. Despite Bush's falling popularity, this country is still too far to the right to elect someone like that.

Last summer was hot. Last winter was warm. This summer (which has not started yet) is cool.

So...extrapolate your observations into a long-term trend.

I'm not saying that you're not seeing the effects of global warming. I'm just saying that based on three observations in Turkey, one in Germany and one in the Netherlands over the course of less than a year, you can't really draw a conclusion. And that's part of the problem of the whole global warming "debate".

I always find it helpful to track the sources of information they are siteing. For example, there's Professor Bob Carter. This is a professor who claimed that global warming stopped in 1998 [tinyurl.com] when it turns out that 2005 was the hottest year on record (since we began tracking such things).

I saw a similar article making similar claims yesterday and the "experts" they sited weren't even in the field of climatology, and had gone so far as to fake a letter from the National Academy of Sciences to give their position a supposed credence.

Show me one peer reviewed scientific paper that says anything other than global warming is happening and it's caused by human emissions of CO2. To my knowledge, this does not exist. I recognize that peer review is somewhat prone to group think, and in that you might expect a leaning one direction or another. But to have ZERO? That seems rather dramatic to just be a group think issue.

A lot of the "scientists" that I've seen taking a position on this are clearly hucksters working for the likes of Exxon Mobile, etc. I have little doubt that there are some scientists who are legitimate who don't buy into the common thinking, but that doesn't mean the common thinking is wrong. They need to back up their beliefs with sound evidence and method. But they don't.

According to Gore, global warming will end it all in 10 years. Yet he felt no need or responsibility to do anything about it when he was a Senator or Vice President.

You mean when he was writing Earth in the Balance, or when he was part of the Administration that negotiated and signed on to the Kyoto Protocol?

He felt no need to campaign on the issue in 2000

You mean the campaign in which during which he said [debates.org] this:

I do. I think that in this 21st century we will soon see the consequences of what's called global warming. There was a study just a few weeks ago suggesting that in summertime the north polar ice cap will be completely gone in 50 years. Already people see the strange weather conditions that the old timers say they've never seen before in their lifetimes. And what's happening is the level of pollution is increasing significantly. Now, here is the good news, Jim. If we take the leadership role and build the new technologies, like the new kinds of cars and trucks that Detroit is itching to build, then we can create millions of good new jobs by being first into the market with these new kinds of cars and trucks and other kinds of technologies. You know the Japanese are breathing down our necks on this. They're moving very rapidly because they know that it is a fast-growing world market. Some of these other countries, particularly in the developing world, their pollution is much worse than anywhere else and their people want higher standards of living. And so they're looking for ways to satisfy their desire for a better life and still reduce pollution at the same time. I think that holding onto the old ways and the old argument that the environment and the economy are in conflict is really outdated. We have to be bold. We have to provide leadership. Now it's true that we disagree on this. The governor said that he doesn't think this problem is necessarily caused by people. He's for letting the oil companies into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Houston has just become the smoggiest city in the country. And Texas is number one in industrial pollution. We have a very different outlook. And I'll tell you this, I will fight for a clean environment in ways that strengthen our economy.

and he feels no responsibility to run for president in 2008 in order to get the power necessary for him to save the world.

I don't see your point. Is it not possible to believe that trying to run for President may not be the best way to advance the cause of fighting global warming? Seems to me you've got three outright lies, and one complete irrelevancy, here.

part of the Administration that negotiated and signed on to the Kyoto Protocol?

The Clinton administration did not ratify the Kyoto protocol. It never intended to. Gore signed it "symbolically", whatever the heck that means, but they never actually submitted the protocol to the Senate. More here [wikipedia.org]. Gore might have been a big fan of Kyoto, but his administration never was.

Seems to me you've got three outright lies, and one complete irrelevancy

I don't see you complaining when articles from Daily Kos are posted. Why is it so bad to hear both sides of a contreversy?

There is a slight difference between people posting political opinions on an openly political web site, and people who try to pass their political opinions off as science. Further, when they aren't actually anybody's political opinion, but rather paid propaganda as part of a lobbying campaign, the difference is even greater.

If they want to have a blog called "Exxon Outgassing" or something like that, and post their spin there, I have no problem with that. Or if this were a case where someone actually had some research to present, that would be fine. But so far as I can see, this is propaganda, pure and simple, and trying to pass it off as "the other side of a controvery" is dishonest.

--MarkusQ

P.S. The odd thing is, I used to be a HCGW skeptic, until the sheer duplicity of the oil lobby convinced me to look into it more. So in my case, at least, their money backfired on them.